A Little Book News

I was reading Chuck Wendig’s post about self-promotion, and how you should present yourself and your books as the best version of yourself that you can. I realised that anyone reading my blog recently probably wouldn’t know that I write books, since I haven’t talked about them much lately. Of course much of that was because I focused on the new books, the Viridian System series, while I was at Camp Nano, and then I didn’t get around to telling you how Bravo Victor was going because I’d got so much prepared for August. No more excuses, then.

Princelings Books

Some time around the end of July or early August my total downloads went through the 5000 mark! Whoo-hoo!

Bravo Victor finished its time on Kindle Select with a whimper, and I brought the Smashwords version out on August 1st. It was in Barnes & Noble and the Apple iBookstore shortly afterwards, followed by the complete range of stores that Smashwords distributes to. You can find the whole lot here, if you like. There are a few technical differences between the files that go to KDP and to Smashwords, and I admit I prefer the look of the Smashwords version on my kindle. It’s just to do with the illustrations, nothing important!

I had the first five Princelings books available on special offers through Smashwords in July. That got me a good number of new downloads from people getting the Trilogy free, and a few who bought Traveler and Talent Seekers at half price.

What I find interesting is that during the first three months that Princelings of the East has been priced at free, I have had about as many downloads of it at Barnes & Noble as at Smashwords. In July and August, these overtook my Amazon price-matched downloads, which continue to average more than one a day. If the B&N and Apple sales take off on the back of the free introduction to the series, I’ll be very pleased. It’s a big If, of course!

I haven’t got very far on preparing the new paperback editions of the Princelings books, but there’s plenty of time for that.

The Viridian System series

As you know, I finished book 1, The Perihelix, in July. I was planning to edit it in the autumn, but other projects might delay that. I have to work out which has higher priority, The Perihelix or the Princelings revamp.

The Perihelix – or rather the Viridian System series – now has both a website and a Facebook page. As with Princelings, there will be some exclusive stuff on the Viridian website – http://viridianseries.uk. The Facebook page is http://facebook.com/viridianseries. I decided to drop the word ‘system’ for a website address. Do you think I should keep it as the series title, though?

They do say start building your buzz about the book from six months before it comes out, so I hope you’ll drop over and sign up to follow both sites so that the buzz will start spreading!

White Water Landings

My plan was to work hard through August to get this out in early September. I didn’t really get onto it again till halfway through the month. Then my scanner went wrong, which was an excuse to put rescanning the photographs off for a while longer. In a way I’m glad I held back on publishing it in spring because of all the books and memoirs out about World War 1. But I definitely want to have it out for next year, before what would have been my dad’s 100th birthday. The first Empire flying boats were produced 80 years ago too, so I must watch out for potential link opportunities.

4 thoughts on “A Little Book News”

In truth, Julie – I don’t. I think a number of us very active indie authors are suffering a bit of burn-out at present. And now my printer has burnt out, which means I have to go and find another one… Sigh 🙂